Destiny's Road (30 page)

A hand snatched at his shoulder and pulled him around. The probe was a man with a full red beard. He snarled, "What did you think you were doing, shooting at a spectre? Bird guns aren't for things that big!"

Jemmy protested. "He was going after my man, man!"

"Take the pose!" The parole's chest heaved. He must have run flat out. "How often do you have to be taught? Take the pose and the bird thinks you're a firebird. Firebirds don't run, don't shout, don't shoot!"

"Shimon was posed! We were all posed. Why did it kill Shimon?" While I stood like a statue- "When the bird got close he tried to run." The probe heaved in a ragged breath. "Lost his nerve. Yeah. They could have killed you all. That's why we're here."

Jemmy had seen... but he said something safe. "Thanks, man. You took them out good."

Redbeard turned without answering. He and the other probe spoke for a time. Jemmy waved the gatherers back to work; and they obeyed, fortunately; and he waited for orders.

Redbeard told him, "Take your people back to barracks. Four of you carry this one. Wait for us. We'll look around a little. There has to be a report."

Suspicions

If speckles can be farmed elsewhere, we must still extract potassium to feed it. Why bother? We'll grow it here.

-Will Coffey, Hydroponics

Of course the strongest men should have been carrying Shimon; but the ones who did were the ~first names Jemmy could remember. Dennis and Denis, Henry and Amnon.

Jemmy draped Shimon's nearly empty pack to keep some of the rain off Shimon's torn torso. The Parole Board might want a coroner to examine those wounds.

He walked alongside while four men carried the fifth. He'd told off two more to carry one of the spectre birds, for dinner and a chance to examine the wounds. And so the funeral procession straggled up the Road.

"Willametta?"

"Trusty."

"There was a joke 'Andrew' wouldn't have missed. 'It's the law'?" Willametta guffawed. "Well, I wasn't here yet, but you can picture it. Nobody gets a bird gun except the probe. But there hadn't been any birds so they'd been eating nothing but rice and veggies for weeks. One day a crooner popped up in the field. It's as big as an ostrich. Well, the probes and the trusty were a little slow for Gordon Weiss. He didn't wait. He ran the bird down and jumped on it and tried to crush it in a scissor lock."

Jemmy thought it over. "Ouch."

"Of course those aren't really feathers. There's a reason the windbird predators all have needle beaks. They've got to stab through the Destiny feathers to get at the meat. Because the feathers are nothing but needles.

"So picture it," she said. "Gordon's legs and arms are full of needles, and he rolls away screaming, and the bird is crooning and the trusty has finally started shooting, and somebody shouts," Willametta drew breath and bellowed, "'No birdfucking allowed!' And someone else yells-"

Her timing was perfect. Six people behind them shouted, "'It's the law!'"

"And ever since then-"

Light grew behind them, like a sudden dawn.

Drenched, exhausted, frightened: Jemmy could only wonder at the glare behind him that threw blurred shadows along the Road. He turned, expecting to see sunglare through split clouds. That would not be such a strange thing- Whirling storm was still there, but the clouds flared too bright to book at. Lightning was only a faint sputter against that. Jemmy shouted, "Willya! What is that?"

"They're lighting the field. Looking for more birds."

"Lighting it with what?"

The other pallbearers laughed. Willametta said, "Quicksilver."

"Quicksilver how?"

"The power comes from Quicksilver."

And the long Road stretched away, and after a time the light behind went out.

It seemed to take forever. A white flicker became an intermittent white glow, and the rain blew it away, and there it was again....ntil a blazing yellow-white banner bed them on, and on.... At the end Jemmy stood in the rain before the massive door and its massive lock, and couldn't remember what to do next.

Like the barracks, the toolhouse was built for giants. Generations of gatherers labored to move masses of rock, their lives as nothing to their Parole Board masters... Nah.

Jemmy had come to understand Cavorite's intent.

Find potassium! Get it back to the landing site before everyone on Destiny dies!

They must have come prepared to refine the ore, here or at Spiral Town. Speckles must have been a surprise: a plant that poisoned herbivores by secreting potassium and other trace elements that Earthlife needed.

So Cavorite brought the Road here, and Cavorite's crew farmed speckles. They came with interstellar technology and desperate intent, and they built massive forts of fused rock.

If the first settlers tried to stop them from leaving, and later remembered Cavorite as a ship of deserters, perhaps it was because they were already speckles-shy.

Today's gatherers lived in housing that settler wizards had built for themselves. Prisoners swaddled in luxury! Twerdahl's crew hadn't barred this door against themselves; the bock must have been added years later, or centuries.

And he didn't have a key. Oh, that was it. Jemmy couldn't get in, so four men were standing behind him still hoisting the dead weight of Shimon. Jemmy turned toward the barracks.

Willametta blocked his way.

"You've got to give over the packs and gloves first," she said urgently, "and your gun. They'll shoot you! Have some sense!"

"We can't just Two hours' walk through rain with lightning blasted vision and thunder-shattered hearing and that damned ghostly banner ahead must have turned off his mind. Of course they could wait out in the storm for the probes' convenience. Yes, but they couldn't set Shimon down in the mud. Jemmy booked around him.

Two gatherers were half-reclined on an exposed ridge of bare white rock. Jemmy told them, "Move."

They stood, not hurrying: Rita and Dolores Nogabes.

"Here," he beckoned the pallbearers, and they set the body down. Shimon was still dripping wet, and his pack no longer covered him. Jemmy looked around and found packs piled on another bare tufa ridge, and the dead spectre bird next to them.

He felt queasy, looking at the spectre. Its torso was chopped half through, raggedly, as if a big dull ripsaw had been used on it while it wiggled.

Warm breath in both ears: he jumped. Voices whispered:

"Trusty?"

"Could be a long wait."

The twins had him bracketed. Jemmy said, "Sorry. If I had a key we could wait in the toolhouse, but then I'd be a probe, so maybe I wouldn't give a shit."

"What we sometimes do-"

"-We go around the other side of the barracks."

"The corner? For shelter?"

The women brushed gently against him on both sides. Even through the poncho that felt nice, and practiced. One said, "Not everyone, just us. The rest, they know not to bother us because you're a trusty. And it's a corner-"

"Of course it's still wet, but it's not so cold."

"You could think of it as slippery." That twin had to be Dolores.

It was tempting. Jemmy's arms had reflexively moved around their waists; at worst they warded off some rain. Dolores meant it, he thought, but anger still smoldered in Rita's eyes. So what was going on?

He said, "You know they'll do a count."

He felt Rita go rigid. Dolores said quickly, "They'll want to know what spectres were doing there in the fields where there's no prey. So they won't be right behind us."

"But we might want to hurry, or just fool around now and then stay in tomorrow." Rita Dolores: "Have you seen the big baths?"

"There's the packs and there's us," Jemmy said firmly. "Three of us in the barracks, that hasn't changed. Andrew's gone but I'm here. I count eighteen of us out here including Shimon. But that should be nineteen."

Rita snapped, "He'll be back!"

Who? Jemmy asked, "And the pack? Piling them up is good, but he took a pack. I counted those too."

Rita touched Dolores's hand and they both faded back. Amnon Kaczinski asked, "You got a problem, Trusty?"

Willametta was standing beside the looming giant, and Jemmy spoke to both. "You tell me. A missing man, a missing pack, and a pair of probes coming closer every second. Those guns are like hoses. Then again, I don't have a problem, Amnon. 'Sure I know we're one gatherer short, man, and he stole a pack of speckles too, but I can't chase him because there's just me to watch all of these other gatherers, including that big dangerous-looking one-'"

Willametta spoke. "Yes~ all right, Rafik took Shimon's pack and he'll take a handful of speckles for the stash!"

Amnon said, "Willametta-"

"-And the Parole Board won't notice that little, all right? And you should have stopped him, Amnon! He's crazy-"

"We need the speckles, Willya!"

"We've got two man-years' weight of speckles stashed and what did we ever do with it? But now we've got something to wear, finally we've got clothes! What if Rafik gets caught now?"

Jemmy suggested, "Send someone for him?"

"We can't have two missing! He'll be back," Willametta assured herself.

"Good. I've got a few questions."

"Talk to Andrew-"

"The probes are going to ask me questions. We didn't know there'd be a dead man, so I wasn't told any answers. Why did the birds attack Shimon?"

"How would I know that?"

''Amnon?"

"Birds." Amnon shrugged massively. "You never know."

"But am I supposed to know?-No? Good. Will they ask me to guess? Willametta? Amnon?"

"Shut up, you!" The big man was going into a rage.

Willametta said, "Go away, Amnon."

"But, Willya-"

"Amnon, what do they do to you when you hurt a trusty? Go away! Go wait for Rafik."

"He's not- Oh." The big man went.

"Wilbametta? Just give me a guess that doesn't sound totally stupid." She was silent.

"Mating season makes them twitchy?"

"What? Windbirds don't have a mating season."

"He cut himself? No, that's-"

"Human blood? It'd drive birds away!" She was laughing at him. "Try this then." Jemmy hesitated. The bird struck, then Shimon turned the probe was sure it couldn't happen that way... so Jemmy knew that Shimon had been murdered. But how?

Did he dare to guess right? But Willametta was looking at him, waiting. "Suppose one poncho out of all our ponchos wasn't the right color.

Not quite the color of a firebird. There must be animals or plants that don't secrete potassium but that show colors, maybe a little off."

She was shaking her head. He persisted. "Is there a paint source? In the toolhouse?"

"That thing in the toolhouse used to make survival biscuits out of Earthlife garbage. Trusty, any trusty would know that."

"Well, that's why I'm asking, Willametta!"

She nodded.

"Let's see, you brought a bird home for dinner last night. Now, suppose Shimon was cold so he kept his poncho on, and he still had it this morning-"

Her hands gripped his arms hard. "Don't say that!"

"-with the blood of a windbird all over it. If some of those horrors whiffed Destiny blood-"

'Don't tell them that!"

"Was he a spy?"

Willametta's mouth stayed open.

Jemmy said, "The probes have to know what's going on in the barracks. They need a spy. They can tell a spy they'll make him the next trusty. Barda and Andrew, they're trusties now, but were they spies before?"

"Andrew was."

"So he knows how a spy gets picked. Did Shimon know you've stashed some speckles?"

She pulled him close and whispered in his ear. She was scared right through. "They haven't touched it. Yes, he knew, but he didn't know where. How could you know all this, Jemmy?"

"I guess I was waiting for someone to die. Barda and Andrew have to know who the spy is, or they can't hide anything. When the birds tore into Shimon, it all just fit, except the paint, I guess. Who gave him his poncho this morning? Barda?"

They were hood to hood, arms bracing each other against the wind. An approaching probe would see only lovers. Jemmy said, "Willametta, I need a story to tell the probes. They know something. They waited for us in the rain. This morning they stayed to search for something else before they caught up with us."

She said, "They'll search the barracks. Did Andrew tell you-" She looked into his eyes. "Damn him. When the probes search, you open every door and drawer. Don't close any of it. They do that. You go around the room-"

"Clockwise?"

"I don't know. Sure! Or watch their hands. If one points to something, you open it or move it or lift it. Try not to talk too much." The rain slacked and she looked around; they all seemed to do that. She said, "Rafik's back-" Her breath caught oddly.

Jemmy could see past huddled gatherers, far down the Road to where two rainbow birds walked bike men. Two.

Willametta's hands closed like claws and she pushed her cheek against his and keened in terror. He whispered, "Not Rafik?"

"They're too soon! Where did they come from?"

"Isn't the Parole Board in that direction? No way could a runner get to them. Settler magic?" He remembered an old word from the lessons. "Phones?"

"Quick, around the side!" Willametta ducked and lifted the hem of Jemmy's poncho nearly to his chin. He guessed what she had in mind. The rain was back, a waterfall now, and he had to shout into her ear.

"We can't do that."

"It's a distraction!" Her hand found the waistband of his shorts and dipped in to cup his genitals, and squeezed gently.

He stopped her, hand on wrist. "Now listen. There's a man dead and proles coming to look into it. 'Andrew Dowd' is alert and scared and waiting. He can't be around to the side rubbing up against a lovely woman when he could be having her all day tomorrow in dry comfort! It'd be suspicious as hell."